Journal: Versailles on the Potomac Implodes…Again

03 Economy, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Media, Military
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Chuck Spinney sends….

The Afghan debacle is becoming a case study of how political debate in Versailles drips in a naturally self-organizing way to protect the dysfunctional status quo.

As I indicated yesterday and in September, the fundamental flaw that set the stage for the current policy making fiasco was the unexamined analytical hole in General McChrystal's escalation strategy — namely, its dependence of the rapid expansion of the corrupt and ineffective Afghan national security forces.  McChrystal did not analyze this corruption/ineffectiveness issue, but that crucial omission was ignored the hoorah accompanying the immediate leaking of report by his allies buried somewhere in the Versailles apparat.

Continue reading “Journal: Versailles on the Potomac Implodes…Again”

Journal: Cognitive Dissonance, Military Suicides, and an Alternative Interpretation of the Fort Hood Deaths

Ethics
Robert Steele
Robert Steele

For over many years now Phi Beta Iota has been emphasizing both the inappropriate secrecy and obscurity contrived for our dead and wounded, and the almost total black-out on both amputees (many of them multiple amputees) and suicides.

We now know that Gulf I brought back over 250,000 disabled veterans, and that the toxic brew of depleted uranium that we brought to the battlefield, combined with the bio-chemical brew already in Iraq (Dick Cheney kept the receipts), and such prosaic incidentals as aspertain turning into formaldahide when soft drinks are stored in desert heat, are all partly to blame.  What we did not focus on in Gulf I was the mental anguish, in part because Gulf I was a “good war,” a multinational endeavor blessed by the United Nations, and generally seen as justified by the invasion of Kuwait.

Gulf II is another matter entirely.  We now know that CIA called it ocrrectly, based on both the defecting son-in-law of Saddaam Hussein and the 20+ line-crosses that Charlie Allen sent in, and that George Tenet prostituted his office–as Colin Powell prostituted his, both allowing Dick Cheney to get away with over 20 impeachable offenses in relation to foreign policy, and 935 documented lies related to the elective invasion and occupation of Iraq, an invasion made all the worse by the triumverate of Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz (go light), Cheney (fire Garner for wanting to get us out in 90 days) and Bremer (well-intentioned idiocy in disarming the military and police).

Continue reading “Journal: Cognitive Dissonance, Military Suicides, and an Alternative Interpretation of the Fort Hood Deaths”

Journal: Chuck Spinny on Collapse of Reason

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Obama and the Triumph of the Will

The Afghan War Question

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

November 12, 2009

In the opening lines of the oldest treatise on the conduct of war, Sun Tzu said that the question of war is vital to the state, and therefore, it is imperative to study it.  This timeless advice has been been ignored repeatedly by the United States since the end of WWII. The inevitable result has been an insensible rise of war mongering, fueled by arrogance and ignorance, culminating in the chaotic spectacle now enveloping the Afghan War Question in Washington.

The intellectual content of the debate over whether or how much to escalate our forces in Afghanistan has degenerated into formless ranting by all sides.

Read the Complete Article at CounterPunch

Reference: Information Operations (IO) Newsletters

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, DoD, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)
IO Newsletter
IO Newsletter

This extraordinary resource is the personal initiative of Jeffrey S Harley,SMDC/ARSTRAT G39, Deputy, Information Operations.  As received, each new newsletter is posted to the Archives at the above permanent URL:

http://www.oss.net/IO

For many other references relevant to IO, see the original OSS page on IO.  See also our short Memorandum on Chinese Irregular Warfare.

Journal: Out-Sourcing Corruption

Ethics, Methods & Process

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

U.S. Nonprofit Screws up Iraq Jobs Program, Now Working on Afghanistan Repeat

As Joanna Nathan recently warned at ForeignPolicy.com, the U.S. government’s business-as-usual approach of outsourcing development work could have very negative consequences for the mission in Afghanistan.

“If gaudy new mansions built in the local ‘narco-tecture’ style are rented for thousands a month by U.S. contractors, UN agencies, foreign embassies and even rule of law projects, what does that say of the Western commitment to accountability?” she wrote. “For it is important to recognize that when Afghans speak of ‘corruption,’ they may mean perfectly legal actions under the direct auspices of foreign donors. When they hear of billions of dollars being spent in Afghanistan via private contractors only to often see much of the money lost in layer after layer of subcontracting and little real effect on the ground, that is labeled corruption whatever signed contracts there may be.”

Journal: Bushes-Vulcans-Banks-Terrorism

03 Economy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Reform
59-page indictment
59-page indictment

Phi Beta Iota: a 59 page memorandum is rocketing around the Internet, entitled Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001.  Read the report, which includes very specific details and charts with head and shoulder photos.  This material is substantiated not just by the sources cited in the endnotes, but by many other sources such as those reviewed at 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (23) and (indirectly) at Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback (145).

Journal: What Can Obama Learn from Gorbachev?

06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Chuck Spinney: a tribute to Gorbachev and and perhaps an example for Barack Obama?????

Day That Shook the World

by Eric Margolis Lew Rockwell.com    November 10, 2009

In 1975, physicist Andrei Sakharov and a group of fellow Soviet academicians warned the Kremlin leadership that unless the nation’s ruinous defense spending was slashed and funds refocused on modernizing the nation’s decrepit, obsolete industrial base and its wretched state agriculture, the Soviet Union would collapse by 1990.

Their grim warning was prescient. Twenty years ago this week – 9 November, 1989 – boisterous German crowds forced open the hated Berlin Wall, Communist East Germany collapsed in black farce, and the once mighty Soviet Empire began to crumble.

This was one of modern history’s most dramatic and dangerous moments. No one knew if the dying Soviet Union would expire peacefully, or ignite World War III.

In November, 1989, the vast empire built by Stalin that stretched from East Berlin to Vladivostok was on its last legs. The USSR had 50,000 battle tanks and 30,000 nuclear warheads, but could not feed its people. Military spending consumed 20% of the economy. As I saw for myself while traveling around the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s, conditions were often primitive, even third world outside the big cities.